Professor Stephen Murray | |
---|---|
Academic background | |
Education | The Courtauld Institute of Art |
Academic work | |
Discipline | History of Architecture |
Sub-discipline | Gothic architecture |
Stephen D. Murray (born 1945),Professor Emeritus of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University,is an architectural historian,specialising in Romanesque and Gothic architecture. Before his retirement,Murray held the Lisa and Bernard Selz chair in Medieval Art History at Columbia University. [1] He has written several important monographs [2] on French Gothic cathedrals,including Troyes,Beauvais,and Amiens. His work combines analysis of architectural details with discussion of medieval writing about cathedrals. [3] [4] [2] [5] He is considered a pioneer in the development of digital media and visual arts resources for educational use. [6] [7]
Murray was born in London. He was educated as Keble College,Oxford and graduated in 1967. He completed his MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1969,writing on the cathedral at Troyes [8] before earning his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in 1972 under Peter Kidson. [5]
According to Murray,his interests in visually documenting Medieval architecture started during his undergraduate years at Oxford,where he was a part of an expedition to film an 11th-century Armenian cathedral. [9] He first visited Amiens Cathedral before he began his teaching career in the United States,following in the footsteps of Englishmen like John Ruskin,whom Murray considers his hero. In an interview,Murray stated that he continues to visit Amiens several times every year. His second book on the cathedral,Notre-Dame of Amiens:Life of the Gothic Cathedral, dedicated to the people of Amiens,was published by Columbia University Press in 2020. [10] [11]
Murray began his teaching career at Morley College,London in 1969. [5] Before joining the Columbia University faculty in 1986,he held numerous posts at Indiana University,eventually appointed as the founding director the university's School of Fine Art. He was also a visiting professor at Harvard University. [12] At Columbia,Murray was the Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor of Medieval Art History. He also served as the director of graduate studies of the Department of Art History and Archaeology between 1989 and 1992. [12] In 1995,Murray founded the Visual Media Center (now the Media Center for Art History [n 1] ) and was its executive director until 1999. [13] [9] Murray is now retired from teaching. [5]
During the 1990s,Murray developed a segment on Amiens Cathedral for the Art Humanities curriculum at Columbia. Amiens was studied by "virtually every student [...] as a part of their Art Humanities curriculum”at Columbia. [14] When Murray began teaching there,the lack of available visual resources for teaching and studying the Cathedral led him to create the Amiens Cathedral Imaging Project. [n 2] It was the inaugural project for the Visual Media Center,both of which were supported with a funding from the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH). [13] The multimedia website consisted of computer-generated images and animations,drawings,and photographs of the cathedral. The website also contained recreations of the Medieval composer Pérotin's music,primary documents associated with the cathedral,supplemented by secondary information from Murray's own monograph. [14]
After the success of the Amiens Project,the Media Center launched the History of Architecture website, [n 3] which built upon Murray's project. The website is a database of visual images,in the format of QuickTime VR panoramas ('nodes') of various buildings from across the world,representing a wide range of architectural styles. The aim of the project was to provide digital resources for teaching architectural history in American schools. The project was funded by the NEH,the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Office of the Provost at Columbia University. [15]
In 2008,Murray and Andrew Tallon led the Mapping Gothic France project, [n 4] funded by a four-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. [10] The website is a database of over 30,000 digital images,covering 200 Gothic cathedrals in France and England. Other features include plans,elevations,history,and bibliography related to each individual buildings. As of 2017,funding for the project had ended and some of the website's content remained incomplete. [7]
Throughout his career,Murray has received many honours and awards for his work,including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988. Murray's photographs from that time are held in the Courtauld Institute of Arts' Conway Library of art and architecture,and,as of 2017,are being digitised. [16] In 1992,he was appointed by the French Ministry of Culture to the scientific committee overseeing the restoration of Amiens Cathedral. [12] [17]
In January 2020,Murray received an honorary doctorate from the University of Picardy Jules Verne. [18] He is also an honorary citizen of Amiens. [10]
Murray argues that Gothic architecture grew out of desires to replicate shapes and images from the natural world (for instance,trees and branches carved in stone),and was a way to look back to admired historic architectural design by the Merovingians,and also looking forwards and creating something new,for instance "the pointed arch as an indexical sign of a break with the past". [4] Murray's work also carefully encourages historians of architecture to consider how Gothic buildings as they are today have gone through "800 years of change",during which time a building may have been experienced in a variety of ways. [19] In his 1996 book about Amiens, Michael T. Davis notes that part of Murray's original approach was to insist that to experience a cathedral,a modern visitor must use their imagination to fully appreciate "the 'joyful spectacle' of human agency" that made the cathedral possible. [19]
Murray's most notable contribution to architectural historiography and analysis is the way that he combines analysis of a medieval building with analysis of writing about the building from the time of its creation and initial reception. [2] [3] In doing so,he reveals how internal politicking and financial decisions influence the design of medieval cathedrals as much as religious doctrine. [4] [3] Plotting Gothic, Murray's 2015 book,is "premised upon a compelling analogy:the three-dimensional layout of the space of a great church—its plot—is not only constructed through a geometric schema ... but it is also textually and rhetorically constructed". [2] Murray argues that the experience of cathedral spaces is influenced by writing about that space:for instance,in his 13th-century account of the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral after a fire,Gervase of Canterbury used imagery and ideas from the Book of Genesis,with the result being the creation of a "Biblical precedent" for what the building signifies. [2] Murray also discusses how writing by Villard de Honnecourt,"author of a pictorial treatise on Gothic art and architecture",invented the meaning of Gothic,and how Abbot Suger's writing about the abbey church at St Denis influenced the phases of re-building and re-design the site. [4] Writing about a place,Murray suggests,can be seen to affect how the place is used,rebuilt or repaired,perceived,and experienced.
Reviewing the 'Mapping Gothic France' website for The Digital Medievalist,Katherine Werwie praised the quality of the photographs and data captured:"The sections of the website presenting individual monuments offer significant collections of photographs that are particularly useful because the locations from which they were taken as well as the direction of each view are clearly marked. Short of visiting these monuments,one would be hard pressed to find a better visualization of the space of these buildings."
A list of Murray's publications in journals can be found through his profile page on the Mapping Gothic website.
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was a French architect and author, famous for his restoration of the most prominent medieval landmarks in France. His major restoration projects included Notre-Dame de Paris, the Basilica of Saint Denis, Mont Saint-Michel, Sainte-Chapelle, the medieval walls of the city of Carcassonne, and Roquetaillade castle in the Bordeaux region.
Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. It originated in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions of northern France. The style at the time was sometimes known as opus Francigenum ; the term Gothic was first applied contemptuously during the later Renaissance, by those ambitious to revive the architecture of classical antiquity.
Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century, mostly in England. Increasingly serious and learned admirers sought to revive medieval Gothic architecture, intending to complement or even supersede the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time. Gothic Revival draws upon features of medieval examples, including decorative patterns, finials, lancet windows, and hood moulds. By the middle of the 19th century, Gothic Revival had become the preeminent architectural style in the Western world, only to begin to fall out of fashion in the 1880s and early 1890s.
Laon Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church located in Laon, Aisne, Hauts-de-France, France. Built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is one of the most important and stylistically unified examples of early Gothic architecture. The church served as the cathedral of the Diocese of Laon until 1802, and has been recognized as a monument historique since 1840.
Rose window is often used as a generic term applied to a circular window, but is especially used for those found in Gothic cathedrals and churches. The windows are divided into segments by stone mullions and tracery. The term rose window was not used before the 17th century and comes from the English flower name rose.
The Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Amiens, or simply Amiens Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic church. The cathedral is the seat of the Bishop of Amiens. It is situated on a slight ridge overlooking the River Somme in Amiens, the administrative capital of the Picardy region of France, some 120 kilometres north of Paris.
The Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais is a Roman Catholic church in the northern town of Beauvais, Oise, France. It is the seat of the Bishop of Beauvais, Noyon and Senlis.
Flamboyant is a form of late Gothic architecture that developed in Europe in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, from around 1375 to the mid-16th century. In the French timetable of styles, as defined by French scholars, it is the fourth phase of Gothic style, preceded by Primary Gothic, Classic Gothic and Rayonnant Gothic.
French Gothic architecture is an architectural style which emerged in France in 1140, and was dominant until the mid-16th century. The most notable examples are the great Gothic cathedrals of France, including Notre-Dame Cathedral, Reims Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral, and Amiens Cathedral. Its main characteristics are verticality, or height, and the innovative use of the rib vault and flying buttresses and other architectural innovations to distribute the weight of the stone structures to supports on the outside, allowing unprecedented height and volume. The new techniques also permitted the addition of larger windows, including enormous stained glass windows, which fill the cathedrals with light.
Thomas de Cormont was a French Gothic Era master-mason and architect who worked on the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Amiens following the death of its chief architect, Robert de Luzarches. There is speculation that Thomas may have been Robert's disciple.
Renaud de Cormont was a French Gothic Era master-mason and architect who worked on the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Amiens after his father, Thomas de Cormont, who is believed to have been a disciple of Robert de Luzarches.
Lindy M. Grant,, is professor emerita of medieval history at the University of Reading, an honorary research fellow of the Courtauld Institute of Art, and a former president of the British Archaeological Association. Grant is a specialist in Capetian France and its neighbours in the 11th to 13th centuries.
The Basilique Saint-Urbain de Troyes, formerly the Église Saint-Urbain, is a massive medieval church in the city of Troyes, France. It was a collegial church, endowed in 1262 by Pope Urban IV. It is a classic example of late 13th century Gothic architecture. The builders encountered resistance from the nuns of the nearby abbey, who caused considerable damage during construction. Much of the building took place in the 13th century, and some of the stained glass dates to that period, but completion of the church was delayed for many years due to war or lack of funding. Statuary includes excellent examples of the 16th century Troyes school. The vaulted roof and the west facade were only completed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been listed since 1840 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.
Jean Victor Edmond Paul Marie Bony was a French medieval architectural historian specialising in Gothic architecture. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1958 to 1961, Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and Professor of Art at the University of California at Berkeley, from 1962 to 1980.
Andrew J. Tallon was a Belgian art historian. He used lasers to create a precise model of Notre-Dame de Paris, among other buildings.
Peter Kidson was a British Emeritus Professor and Honorary Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art where he lectured on Medieval Architecture until 1990. In his obituary in The Telegraph, he was described as “the most influential historian of medieval architecture of his generation in the English-speaking world”.
Roger Andrew Stalley is a scholar and teacher in medieval architecture and sculpture. His speciality is Early Gothic and Romanesque architecture and sculpture in England and Western Europe with a particular focus on Irish architecture and art. He has published numerous papers and books including Cistercian Monasteries of Ireland in 1987, for which he was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion in 1988 by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, and Early Medieval Architecture in 1999 for the Oxford History of Art series. He is noted for his innovative teaching practices for example, The Medieval Architecture Online Teaching Project, and is recognised in the 2021 publication Mapping New Territories in Art and Architectural Histories, Essays in Honour of Roger Stalley.
Charles William Justin Hanbury-Tracy is a British scholar and heritage consultant on the history and development of medieval British and European continental church furniture. He publishes under the name of Charles Tracy.
Peter Draper, is an architectural historian who has, over his long academic career, specialised in medieval architecture with a particular interest in English ecclesiastical building, primarily cathedrals, and the relationship between the architecture and its social, political and liturgical functions. Latterly his research has extended to Islamic architecture and its influence on Western traditions. He is Professor emeritus and an honorary life member of Birkbeck College, University of London where he is currently Visiting Professor in the History of Architecture. He has published numerous articles and books including The Formation of English Gothic : Architecture and Identity, for which he won two prestigious awards; the Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians in 2008 and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion in 2009, awarded by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.
Malcolm Thurlby, teaches art and architectural history at York University, Toronto. His research interests focus on Romanesque and Gothic architecture and sculpture in Europe and 19th and early 20th century architecture in Canada.